


those kind of friends

by gabrieeella



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Jeronica
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-04
Updated: 2018-12-24
Packaged: 2019-08-18 18:04:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 11,064
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16522031
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gabrieeella/pseuds/gabrieeella
Summary: He remembered the first time he’d seen her wear her hair like that, the way it’d unsettled him a little. It was so Betty-like, and yet not Betty-like at all. Betty’s ponytail moved like spilled sunlight. Veronica’s swung around like a guillotine.Or, a series of late-night encounters force Jughead and Veronica to explore who they really are (and could be) to each other.





	1. veronica ripple effect

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [Не настолько близки](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18895303) by [trololonasty](https://archiveofourown.org/users/trololonasty/pseuds/trololonasty)



"Ow."

"Sorry."

A silent beat.

" _Ow_."

"Jughead, you need to—"

" _Ow!"_

Veronica drew back with a sharp sigh, stare flicking ceilingward. "You need. To hold.  _Still_."

Jughead met her gaze with a harassed one of his own. "You need. To back.  _Off_." He lifted a hand to swat away the needle approaching his face and her brows snapped up in that cool, patronizing way of hers—the one that soundlessly carried a Hepburnian drawl of 'Oh, do I?'

After a beat, she offered a simple shrug. "Okay."

He eyed her skeptically in the fluorescent light of the diner. It was never just 'okay' with Veronica. It was 'okay' and 'but also this is why you're going to do it my way'.

"I guess Betty can stitch you up, then."

And there it was.

His jaw tightened a bit, stare averting a fraction to the window behind her. The inky nightscape of the Pop's parking lot was the same color as her eyes. He glanced at a neon pink sign for milkshakes instead, annoyed.

"I'm sure she'd be a lot better at it than me," she pressed on thoughtfully, and he chewed the inside of his cheek. "Caring. Concerned. Wanting to know what happened."

He didn't understand how somehow, despite the flimsy, entirely associative nature of their relation to each other—best friend's girlfriend, girlfriend's best friend, occasional ally and equally occasional enemy—she could read him like she could. Like it was easy. Like he was some breezy Capote novella and not the Joycean mindfuck he fancied himself to be. It was aggravating and unsettling in roughly equal measure, but even worse, it made him feel predictable.

He'd always thought of himself as something of a mystery.

Most people let him believe he was.

Veronica made it clear she knew the last thing he wanted to do was explain to his bleeding heart girlfriend that he'd smashed his milkshake into the wall in a sudden fit of rage.

He glanced down at his clumsily bandaged hand, cursing the fact that he couldn't just stitch himself up. He didn't have health insurance, so the clinic was out. Archie was in juvie, so that was out. The Serpents were all on a risky recon mission for Ghoulie intel that he wasn't about to mess up by calling one of them. So really, there was just Veronica—the girl who'd watched it all happen in real time, stock-still, dark eyes bright with shock over the register.

Shock and something else. He hadn't been able to place it in the rush of adrenaline.

"Want me to call her?"

"Just finish the stupid stitches," he muttered, gesturing at the expectant hand she'd hadn't lowered so much as a fraction. She couldn't even  _pretend_  to believe he had any say in this situation. After a second, he realized she was peering at him and he blinked under the scrutiny. He'd never really felt comfortable under her stare. "What?"

"Just trying to find the subtext of a 'please and thank you' in that sentence."

His wariness sank into a sigh.

"Some buried imagery, maybe? Metatextual acknowledgment of the fact that it's the middle of the night and I just finished a double shift and I don't actually have to do this for you?"

He met her gaze with what was initially insincere indulgence, a prelude to a sarcastic 'please', but for some reason, something about her face made his sourness snag a bit. He took a second to look at her. There were dark circles beneath her eyes. Smudged flecks of mascara at the corners. Her cheeks looked hollower than he remembered, the sheen of her irises over-caffeinated rather than curious.

He knew she'd had a hell of a summer. Losing her family, losing Archie—really, losing her life as she'd come to know it. If it'd happened to anyone else, it'd be the only thing he could see when he looked at them, but not her. She was all gall and gumption and Louboutined tenacity. He'd watched her work shift after shift all summer, her ponytail high and uncompromising on her head—defiant, almost, like it was aware it didn't belong on her so it swung around extra springily as a 'fuck you'.

He realized it was easy to forget to feel bad for someone like Veronica. To see a perpetual dazzling first impression instead of an actual person. But there she was, flesh and bone and quietly thrumming pulse, and he realized she looked thinned. Fraying. And, he noted a little unsettlingly, a lot like the reflection of himself he saw in her pupils.

Maybe that was the other thing he'd seen in her expression after smashing the glass.

Familiarity.

"I—sorry," he offered after a beat, glancing down at his hands. He was sitting on a bar stool with the diner bar to his back, bent knees separating her upright frame from his. The position adjusted their comically lopsided heights so that for once, they were even. "What I meant was: can you please finish stitching me up?"

He felt her eyes on him for a long beat. "Fine." An airy sigh. "But only because torturing you is fun."

His stare flicked up to hers and she smiled. For some reason, he felt the corner of his mouth instinctively tug up.

"Try not to move." The smile vanished as soon as she leaned forward. "Relax, I'll be gentle."

He flinched at the bite of the needle but otherwise kept still. "Gentle's never seemed to be your style."

"You don't know my style, Jones."

His teeth gritted as she began stitching. "Enlighten me, then."

"How long do you think we're going to be here?" she snorted, and he winced when the thread she'd tightened accidentally sliced through his skin.

" _Fuck_ —"

"Sorry, I can't—

"Veronica!"

"I just can't see anything in this stupid light!"

"Then fix it!" he hissed, and in a huff of annoyance, she pushed his legs apart and stepped onto the rung at the bottom of the bar stool. He hadn't even processed the disorienting shift in proximity before she'd plucked his beanie off and flung it onto the countertop. "What the  _hell_  are you—"

A clench of fingers in his hair pulled his head back till he was staring right up at her, neck angled back like some kind of vampiric offering. She was looming over him, knee propped onto the stool, nudged snugly between the lanky caps of his. " _Now_  we're talking."

He swallowed in a tight bob of Adam's apple.

Every line of his body was tensed.

His body had no precedent for processing this kind of invasion—his beanie was gone, his shins were pressed against her calf, his hair was caught in her hand. He felt razed.

"Okay, now for the  _zillionth_  time, try not to move."

He was pretty sure that wouldn't be a problem.

She lowered the needle with an entirely oblivious look of focus, free hand dropping down to the nape of his neck to get a better grip on him, and he attempted to get a grip on himself in return. He'd never been this close to her before—or at least, not alone. Not without Betty and Archie around to buffer the interaction, ridding it of any realness. It felt dizzying and unnatural.

He impulsively decided he hated it.

"There we go."

He barely felt the bite of the needle against his skin.

"Amazing what actually seeing can do."

Every word was falling against his skin in a warm flutter.

His nose started to fill with the smell of her—diner fries and something else, something curling and expensive—and he tried to focus on figuring out what it was. Tried to focus on anything, really, that wasn't the shadows cast by the fan of her eyelashes or the way her ponytail had slipped over her shoulder to dangle beside her face.

He remembered the first time he'd seen her wear her hair like that, the way it'd unsettled him a little. It was so Betty-like, and yet not Betty-like at all. Betty's ponytail moved like spilled sunlight. Veronica's swung around like a guillotine.

"You need a haircut, Jones."

"What?" The word fought the whole way up his throat.

"Your political statement bangs keep getting in my way—can you hold your hair back while I do this?"

He suddenly became aware of his hands, or rather, of the fact that he didn't know where they were. Were they in his lap? Were they hanging by his sides?

"Jughead."

"Yeah, sorry."

He managed to move his arm up from wherever it was and push his hair back.

The corners of her lips edged up competitively. "Perfect."

He didn't know why, but the glint in her eye made something bitter well in him. Resentful, even. Resentful that she could stand there like this was some kind of arcade game she was after a high score on, tongue poking through her teeth, entirely unbothered, while he felt like she was fucking metastasizing in him.

It was reckless. She had to know how overwhelming she was.

In general, obviously.

Not just to him.

Least of all to him.

But still.

"Gotta say, you're a quick study, kid." His eyes thinned in incomprehension and she flashed a smile, this time a little more sincere. "Seizing to statue in 0.5—I'm impressed."

He cleared his throat, ignoring the uneven way it bobbed. "Just want this over with as soon as possible."

"You and me both, girl."

She leaned in to get a closer look at her handiwork and his stare flew up, obstinately focusing on something in the ceiling. There was a char mark that looked a little like Jay Leno. He almost said something but couldn't quite manage.

"Alright," she sing-songed after a tortuously long stretch, turning his chin to the side to inspect it from a different angle. He tried to ignore the feeling of her fingers on his jaw. "I think my work here may very well be done."

"Great."

He surged forward to get out from under her and she planted a reflexive hand against his chest, forcing him back onto the stool. "Not so fast, Rambo."

His back hit the countertop with a decisive  _thud._ His head immediately went somewhere that he wasn't proud of—a place of thighs and hands and the worn cotton of her Pop's uniform scrunched all the way up her hips—and it made his pulse jump around for a few erratic beats.

"Look, this, uh…" she chewed the inside of her cheek, glancing down at the hand on his chest. He wondered if she could feel the staccato of his heart. "This thing you're going through. Whatever's been making you smash glasses against walls."

His stomach twisted sharply at the pivot.

"I don't need to know what it is, but I do need to know: do you have it under control?"

He merely stared at her, unsure what to say. Unsure what she wanted him to say. Unsure why she was even asking. They weren't those kind of friends.

"In other words, do I need to be worried about Betty?"

Realization coursed over him.

Planets realigned onto their rightful axes.

She was trying to protect Betty.

"No."

She held his stare with a dark one of her own. "Are you sure?"

"One hundred percent."

"Good." She glanced away with a swift nod. "Good." Then, a little tentatively, "Do I need to be worried about you?"

His sense of understanding snagged. Her eyes took their time in meeting his. They looked softer than usual, heavy with the fact that he'd been isolating himself in the diner all summer, that he'd been popping up with mysterious new cuts and bruises every other day, that it wasn't the first time he'd spun out in a panic spiral and broken something on 'accident'.

That she'd unequivocally noticed all of those things.

It made a strange blend of defensiveness and vulnerability flood him. He opened his mouth and then closed it.

No.

This wasn't who they were. They didn't ask each other questions. They didn't invade each other's personal spaces. They navigated each other in deliberate disregard—it was a large part of why he was always here.

The shift in rhythm made him feel destabilized, and in combination with how off-kilter he'd already felt from before, it flipped him onto the defensive. His eyes thinned into something acidic. "Worry about yourself, Veronica."

She blinked and the softness was gone from her gaze.

She dropped her hand from his chest. "Always do."

"Lodge family values."

Her stare flickered slightly as if she'd been struck, and he instantly regretted the words. He knew she was terrified of being like her parents. Hell, he knew the feeling.

He closed his eyes. "I didn't—"

"I have to close up, Jughead."

"Veronica—"

" _Now_."

The word sliced through his piss poor attempt at an apology, which admittedly would've been meandering and badly worded anyway, so he let it go. He needed this day to be over. Every tick of the clock became another chance to make it worse, and at this point, he didn't have the mental bandwidth for 'worse'. He was maxed out. Officially ready to call it.

Time of death: 1:33 AM. 

He slid off the bar stool, grabbed his beanie, and shuffled back to his booth. His laptop was still open, the cursor blinking expectantly over the blank word document spread across the screen, and he snapped it shut with a dark look. He stashed it into his backpack and slid his Serpents jacket over his shoulders.

Just as he reached for his abandoned plate to bring it back to the bar, another hand came into view and grabbed it from the other end. "I got it."

He glanced over his shoulder. Veronica wasn't looking him in the eye. He cleared his throat. "No, it's fine, I can—"

"I said I got it, Jughead." She tugged on the plate to free it from his grip and he didn't let go. Her eyes flashed ceilingward again before deigning to land on his. "Seriously?"

"I can wash it."

"So can I."

"Just let me help."

"I don't need your help."

"Veronica—"

" _What_?"

"You're not like him."

She stilled a little at the words. He swallowed thickly, unsure why he'd said it. It wasn't really his place. Hell, he wasn't even sure it was true—Veronica could very well be exactly like her dad. And even more than that, the whole reason they were fighting in the first place because she'd gotten too personal, so why was it suddenly okay if he did it?

They weren't those kind of friends.

He expected her to glance away. Brush the comment off with a frosty flip of her hair and tell him to go home.

But instead, she blinked at him. And she blinked again. And by the third blink, her eyes deviated a fraction, as if she couldn't quite bring herself to meet his stare. Her mouth flickered upward, a paper-thin attempt at levity. "You sure?"

The vulnerability of her voice hit him square in the chest.

And suddenly, for some reason, he was sure.

Veronica Lodge was nothing like her father.

He almost felt petty for considering otherwise.

Slowly, he found himself turning around to face her. "Is capitalism just fascism in a meritocracy costume?"

Her heavy stare lightened a bit at the tokenism of the question. It spurred him on.

"Is life just one long, restless DMV line for a death certificate?"

Her lips quirked upward.

"Is the hypermaterialization of Christmas catalyzed by the bourgeoise's obsession with shaming the po—"

"Oh, my God, you could just say yes."

_But then you wouldn't be smiling._

He almost said it out loud.

Instead he just smiled back, a small, reflexive little thing triggered by the magnetism of hers. A collateral smile. It almost felt involuntary, and for a second, he couldn't help but dwell in the distinctiveness of the feeling. Betty's smile said ' _hello I love you'_ and he smiled back because he wanted to. Archie's smile said ' _hello I'm here for you'_  and he smiled back because it was mutual. Veronica's smile said ' _hello you're an idiot'_ and he smiled back because he didn't have a choice.

Unrelatedly, he realized they were both still holding the plate. Their fingers were splayed across the base like stars. A small adjustment and his fingertips would brush against hers in a sightless buzz of friction.

Why the hell did that matter?

Why did any of this matter?

Why the hell was he still standing here?

"Alright, I need to finish up closing," she said, as if reading his thoughts, and he immediately released the plate and took a swift step back.

"Right." He cleared his throat as she spun away. The stiff skirt of her uniform remained snug against her hips with the movement. Betty's skirts always twirled. "You sure you don't need any help?"

"Is capitalism just fascism in a meritocracy costume?" she mocked over her shoulder as she waltzed to the bar, shooting him an airy look, and there it was again. The quirk of his lips. Veronica ripple effect. "I've got this, Jughead." He promptly schooled his features into a blank expression and grabbed his backpack, slugging it over his shoulder. "Go be a Larkin poem somewhere else."

The literary reference switched something on in him just as he was leaving, making him slide to a halt by the door. Weirdness paused. Comfort zone activated. "Is that supposed to be an insult?" he scoffed.

"Yep."

"Larkin was a visionary."

"So was Britney Spears."

"Ow." He clasped a wounded hand to his chest. " _Ow._ That comparison physically hurt. I just— _ow_."

"Seems to be your favorite word tonight—kind of expected more eloquence from a writer."

"Yeah, well, we tend to lose that when incompetent sadists are jabbing us with needles."

She stopped stacking plates and pulled her phone out of her pocket, brows drawing into a frown. "Hey, Siri? Can you please find the 'thank you' in that sentence?" At his dry look, she shot him a helpful smile. "Please is a word people with actual manners use—don't worry if you don't recognize it."

"I've actually already been schooled on the meaning of please and thank you tonight."

"We can't all be prodigies."

"You called me a quick study about five minutes ago."

"I was high on diner fumes."

"And standing in the exact same diner for five more minutes cured you of that?"

"Medical miracle."

He tried to think of a response for a second, drawn in by the prickly energy of their exchange, but eventually ended up coming up empty. It made him feel antsy for some reason. His hand was on the doorknob. His stuff was packed up. He was going over to Betty's early in the morning for breakfast. He should go.

It was a natural beat in the rhythm of their exchange to go.

His feet didn't move.

He swallowed loosely.

"There's a burn mark on the ceiling that looks like Jay Leno."

Veronica frowned at the bizarre comment before glancing above her head. Her expression loosened. Grew considering. "That's  _definitely_ John Kerry."

"What?"

"Don't you see the jawline?"

"The jawline's the whole reason it's Ja—"

" _Jughead_."

He glanced down at her with a baffled look and found her staring at him, a little confused, brows high and amused on her head.

"Go home."

His indignant expression loosened. He dropped the hand he was gesturing with. Readjusted the strap of his backpack. "Yeah."

"Yeah."

He turned around and pushed the door, annoyed at how easily it swung open. He didn't know why he'd been avoiding leaving. He needed sleep. The fresh air felt good. And even more than that, him and Veronica weren't linger-around-in-the-middle-of-the-night-to-keep-talking people.

They didn't do the whole 'you hang up first' schtick.

They weren't those type of friends.

Maybe she was right—maybe there really were diner fumes screwing with their heads.

He drove home with the windows open, reveling in the sharp lick of the autumn breeze. He tried not to think about the letter he'd gotten from his mom earlier, or the sketchy-looking man he'd seen his dad whispering with behind the diner. He ignored the fact that a pack of Ghoulies had been watching him through the windows at school, waggling their eyebrows at him as an oblivious Betty played with his hair.

He was done with all of that for today.

He'd thought about it enough.

Had the stitches to prove it.

He didn't bother to check his phone until he was crawling into bed. There were two missed calls and a text from Betty saying she was beat from studying and going to bed but couldn't wait to see him tomorrow for breakfast. He smiled at the explosion of emojis. She knew he found them stupid.

He texted back a quick reply he figured she'd get tomorrow, but just as he set it down it on the nightstand it buzzed again. He frowned as he reached back over for it—was she still up?

_Veronica Lodge sent you an image._

His brows loosened with surprise at the notification. He opened the text with a swipe of his thumb.

It was a side-by-side comparison of the burn mark and John Kerry.

_'No contest.'_

His mouth tipped up instinctively. It took him a second to decide whether or not to respond. It'd been kind of a weird night.

 _'You're high on diner fumes again_ _.'_ He opened up a google search and found a picture of Leno to attach. ' _Easy winner.'_

His phone buzzed within seconds.

' _I've come to the conclusion that you're secretly blind and I'm using your wardrobe as supporting evidence.'_

He snorted at the dig, already preparing his response, but his phone buzzed again before he could finish.

' _N_ _ight, Jones_.'

He couldn't help but feel a tug of disappointment. 

_'Night, Lodge.'_

He set his phone on the nightstand and collapsed back against his bed.

He thought about the fact that she'd compared Britney Spears to Philip Larkin without the slightest hint of irony.

He smiled because he didn't have a choice.

 

* * *

 

 **A/N:** FULL-DISCLOSURE, I haven't watched a single episode of Riverdale since 1x04 so if I've fucked up  _literally everything_ , lmaoooo, my bad. I'm basically a Jeronica tag troller who can't really stomach the show in general but lives for the clearance Dair potential of these two, so this story's meant to serve as some kind of weird ass reservoir for all of my Jeronica feels. The chapters will sort of function as one-shots but they'll be in chronological order, I think, so there's still a story-like flow. I just may jump around a bit in terms of timeline. Or not. Maybe the next chapter picks up the next day, idk, I kind of have no idea what I'm doing here. Anyway, let me know if y'all want me to continue this and/or if I've  _completely_ massacred these characters, because I genuinely am the Mean Girls rando who doesn't even go here. Thanks for reading and please drop a line if you can!


	2. but also don't die

The first bang, Veronica didn't think much of.

A growl of protest from an overworked water heater. An ill-fated bird crashing into the window. A particularly punchy gust of wind knocking a branch against a wall. It could've been anything—Pop's was an opinionated little building with a lot to say.

The second bang made her glance up from her receipts.

She stared up the stairwell to the shadowed diner above, eyes unblinking over the sharp edge of her glasses. The cellar-turned-makeshift-office beneath Pop's remained silent around her, haloed in the quiet light of her desk lamp. Seconds stretched into minutes, and when no other sound followed, she chalked it up to coincidence. Resumed the thoughtless twirl of her pen between her fingers.

The third bang made her jolt in her seat.

It was the loudest of the three—a taunting, aggressive sound that sent a current through the building's foundation—and the vertebra of her spine stacked into a stiff line. It was one in the morning. She'd closed up the diner an hour ago. As far as she knew, she was completely alone.

Her mind immediately raced through a menu of possible scenarios, each one more unnerving than the last. Someone was trying to rob the diner. Someone was trying break in because they thought no one was there. Someone was trying to break in because they knew she  _was_  there.

She glanced at the locked drawer of her desk—a gun she'd stolen from her dad's office a few months ago was stashed inside it—and felt her pulse spike up to a sprint. She'd shot one once before during Archie's fight with the Serpents, a thunderclap warning aimed high above her head, but that was different. That was into the air. She'd never actually aimed at a person.

She reached out and swiped up her phone instead, unsteady fingers instinctively navigating to Archie's number. It took her two rings to remember he was in juvie. She blinked rapidly at the stupidity of the oversight, thumbing to the next contact in her 'favorites' list, and her fingers froze when she saw ' _Home_ '.

She couldn't call them. She couldn't call her own parents. For all she knew, they could be the ones behind it.

Razed by the reality of how fucked up her life had become, she shook her head, deflecting the thought into some remote corner of her head. The names Betty, Kevin, and Reggie skimmed across her screen and she felt herself grow a little panicked: Kevin was out of town for the weekend, Betty was visiting Polly, and Reggie had been coming onto her pretty aggressively ever since Archie had gotten locked up so she'd been avoiding being alone with him.

The weight of her isolation pressed into the slopes of her shoulders. She'd never realized how few friends she'd actually made since she'd moved from New York—or at least, how few friends she'd made that she could consistently count on. Riverdale was a town of ransom notes and murdered classmates, and the shared trauma of it all made it easy to think she'd been forging iron-clad bonds with the people around her.

But what about when the trauma wasn't shared anymore?

What about when she was the sole target?

Were those bonds really cast in iron, or were they just spiderwebs wrapped in foil? A frantic spider spinning a home out of the corner it was backed into?

Her heartbeat slid up a steady incline as she scrolled further and further down her recent texts, feeling more alone by the second. Aside from Betty and Archie, her relationships with people were shifting, mercurial, conditional upon what the latest headline in the paper was, what new scandal pitted who against who. Sometimes, especially lately, Betty wasn't even an exception to that.

Her gaze suddenly snagged on an unexpected name.

Her thumb stilled.

_'Night, Jones.'_

_'Night, Lodge.'_

The thread was two weeks old.

She'd hadn't seen him since the night she'd stitched him up. They rarely crossed paths at school and he'd seemingly stopped coming into the diner. Could she really wake him up in the middle of the night for help? They weren't those kind of friends. In fact, she wasn't even sure they were friends at a—

_BANG._

She hit 'call' before she could even blink.

 

* * *

 

Jughead was greeted by two fierce hands grabbing the lapels of his Serpents jacket and yanking him through the backdoor of Pop's.

" _Jesus_ , Veroni—"

" _Shhh_ ," she hissed, shoving the door shut behind him and sliding the deadbolt into place. She leaned forward to peer between the blinds, shadowed frame practically vibrating with paranoia, and for a second he wondered if all the chaos and murder had finally gotten to her.

It was bound to flip someone.

Cheryl didn't count since she was crazy to begin with.

After a few seconds, she whipped back around to look at him. "Did you see anything out there?"

"Yeah. Trees. Stars." Her stare was hard and unblinking in the shadowed cellar. "A few moths, so watch out."

"You think this is funny?"

"I don't even know what 'this' i—"

"You think I'd call you over in the middle of the night as some sort of joke?"

"No, I just—"

"You think with everything that's happened in this Deliverance Bermuda Triangle of a town, it's  _that_  far-fetched to think we might be in actual danger here?"

He lifted his palms to fend off Hurricane Veronica. "I just think you might be overreacting a little."

" _Really_?" she scoffed, baffled, "because  _I_  think this place has an uncanny penchant for serial killers and I'm not exactly its most beloved reside—"

A sudden rattling from the pipes made her jolt half a foot in the air, shoulders seizing inward so sharply it looked like she was going to cave in on herself. His brows couldn't help but tick up in surprise at the reaction. Her face was pale. Her gaze was fixed down the hallway, wide-eyed, void of the fire it'd held just seconds ago. Her fingers were curled into nervous fists.

She looked young all of a sudden.

He wasn't sure he'd ever seen her look  _young_  before—or at least, not like this. Not in a way that didn't seem like a Katy Perry song, all dewy and reckless and hot-blooded. This was different. Vulnerable. It softened an unidentifiable edge in him.

"Just the pipes," he murmured in explanation, and she rolled her eyes, arms coming up to wrap around herself in a shawl.

"I know that."

"They can bang, too."

"Also know that."

He waited a few seconds. "So… maybe the bangs you heard earlier were—"

"Jughead," she cut in, turning to look at him, a flash of gunmetal in her eyes, "I know you think I'm just some spoiled heiress who thinks 'plumbing' is where you sip champagne and pick plums on the Cape, but I've been single-handedly running this diner all summer. I know what the pipes sound like."

He surveyed her for a second. She stared right back at him, sharp and acid-tipped, and for some reason, a flicker of relief coursed through him. Soft Veronica was disorienting. This Veronica he knew how to navigate. "And you're sure that's not what you heard before?"

"Positive."

"Because sometimes pipes can—"

" _Positive_."

"I'm just saying that—"

A sudden, menacing bang from above them cut through the words, vibrating down the building like a shudder, and his gaze snapped up the stairwell. Awareness slid up his shoulders in a cold swell. That definitely hadn't come from the pipes.

As if reading his mind, Veronica shot his profile a withering look. "Still think it's the pipes, Joe the Plumber?"

He kept his stare trained on the sliver of diner visible through the cellar door, distantly impressed by her ability to sound haughty even while terrified. "No, I don't."

And then he set off up the stairs.

 

* * *

 

At first, Veronica was convinced that calling Jughead had been a mistake.

He was ticking off all his usual boxes—skeptical, condescending, dismissive of everyone's gut feelings except for his own—and the hypocrisy of it all almost irritated her more than being alone unsettled her. The guy essentially ran on a cocktail of self-victimization and conspiracy theories. He could listen to someone else's convictions just  _once_.

But now that he was slowly edging up the stairs in front of her, deliberate and silent, carefully testing each step, she conceded that she didn't exactly  _hate_  having a human shield around. It was stabilizing. And, if she was being honest, a little strange.

She'd never seen Jughead shrug on the so-called 'protector' role before.

It was a part Archie always played—the textbook Gryffindor that leapt blindly into danger, strong-arming his way through whatever obstacles lay ahead. He wore the hero uniform so unanimously that she'd always assumed it didn't fit Jughead, that it was too big, too bulky for his wiry, cerebral frame.

Watching him now, though, she realized that it wasn't that Jughead  _couldn't_ wear it, he just never really had to. It fit him differently. Archie was all broad-shouldered tenacity and foolhardy bravery, but Jughead was sharp-angled. Sinewy. Architectured for agility, for quick escapes, for slipping in and out of places undetected and calibrating the best possible next move.

"Do you see any—"

He lifted a finger over his shoulder to signify silence and just like that, any appreciation she felt toward him vanished. She wasn't sure what it was that made certain things he did feel so self-righteous, like he thought of himself as the lone, logical eye of the perpetually roiling storm that was Riverdale, but it always managed to piss her off. He'd gotten himself expelled over a jacket. He'd gone on a hunger strike over a drive-in. He'd thrown a tantrum over a birthday party.

Jughead was the biggest drama queen in town.

"Oh, make sure you—"

Up came the hand again, swift and condescending, and her eyes flashed.

"Jughead, get that finger out of my face or I'll rip it off and sew it to your beanie."

His stare flicked over his shoulder to hers. She feigned a smile.

"It's not like it can get any uglier."

He lowered his hand with a sigh.

"Now, what I was  _going_ to say—"

"Can you at least whisper?"

" _What I was going to say_ ," she repeated a little louder, fully aware that it could get both of them murdered but presently too competitive to care, "is to watch out for the creaky step."

He stared at her for a long, disbelieving beat before turning back around. "Right," he deadpanned, "because we wouldn't want unnecessary noise to give our location away."

"Are you calling my voice an unnecessary noise?" she countered as they continued easing forward.

"Not directly."

"Oh, a cowardly insult—even better."

"Bold words coming from the girl cowering behind me right now."

"First of all," she scoffed with such haughty defiance that he actually glanced over his shoulder to look at her, "I'm physically incapable of cowering, Jones—as in I got bumped from the lead role in A Little Princess because I had to look scared in a scene and I couldn't. Second of all," she waved a hand between the two of them, "this configuration is purely economical."

His brows ticked up. "Really."

"Really, because if something jumps out and attacks us, I'm irreplaceable, but the world could absolutely survive having one less Jughead."

"Oh, so it's for the good of mankind."

She shot back a prim smile. "Precisely."

Even in the darkness, she could see the disbelieving sheen of amusement in his eyes. For some reason, it made the superior curl of her mouth drift into something a little more genuine. His own mouth quirked up in return.

And then they heard the front door being jostled.

Veronica stiffened, gaze cutting past his shoulder as he whipped around to look up the stairs. The shadowed diner loomed a few steps above them, the door in question just out of their line of sight, and the momentary sense of ease she hadn't even realized she'd fallen into completely vanished.

"What kind of lock do you have on the door?" he muttered, and she forced herself to swallow the knot that'd sprung up her throat.

"Three deadbolts." He shot her a look that was half-baffled, half-impressed, and she gave a steely shrug. "If they want to get through that door, it's going to take a lot more than a little rattling."

"Apparently."

"I have a gun."

" _What_?"

She didn't really mean to blurt it out like that but she couldn't help it—her thoughts were all scattered and nervy.

"Downstairs. In my desk. I stole it from my dad."

He blinked at her for a second, as if unsure how to follow up. "I mean, do you know how to use it?"

"Yes." She swallowed. "No."

His gaze thinned in bewilderment.

"Maybe."

"Veronica—"

"I don't know, I mean I've shot one before, how different can it be?"

"Very different!" he hissed, and before she could offer any kind of response, a new sound replaced the jostling knob. It was muffled. Musical, even. After a few seconds, she realized it was laughter.

Something unclenched the slightest bit in her chest—maybe it was all just a prank? A gaggle of rebels-without-a-cause looking to get into some trouble on a Saturday night? She glanced at Jughead just as he turned to look at her, and his eyes were tapered and musing, likely drawing the same conclusion.

"Do you think—?"

"Could be," he murmured with a nod, "but we shouldn't assume—"

"Right," she agreed, "it could easily still be—

"Exactly," he supplied as he turned toward the doorway, though after a few seconds, he glanced back around in a slow, puzzled double-take. 'Did we just have a non-verbal conversation?' was bright in his stare and she blinked at him, unsure what to do with it.

"So what's the game plan?" she prompted after an awkward beat.

"Uh," he began, likely still a little unsettled by the discovery of their apparent telepathy, "I think our best bet is just to lie low for a bit."

Another round of muffled laughter sounded from outside and a stab of annoyance shot through her—if it really was just a bunch of pimply middle schoolers with nothing better to do out there, she was going to be pissed.

She didn't like to think of herself as someone who scared easily.

Someone who called for help easily.

And yet here she was, crouching behind Jughead Jones of all friggin' people, over what could very well amount to the cast of the The Goonies loitering outside her diner.

"Alternative plan: we march up there and tell whoever it is to fuck off."

He scoffed. "And take a bullet between the eyes when it turns out Hal Cooper broke out of prison for Fargo, act two? No, thanks."

"Jughead, I hear  _giggling—_ you really think Hal Cooper is capable of giggling?"

"I think he's capable of _murder_."

"Besides, he's in a maximum security prison—pretty unlikely that he just Shawshanked his way out of there in a matter of weeks."

"And you think 'pretty unlikely' means anything in Riverdale? Now who's downplaying this 'Deliverance Bermuda Triangle of a town'?"

A fresh peel of laughter rang from outside, this one almost unmistakably mocking, and she clenched her jaw in defiance. Jughead gave her a hard stare.

"No."

Her eyes thinned in consideration.

"You have no idea what's up there!"

"Only one way to find out."

"Wha— _Veronica_ ," he hissed, but it was too late, she'd already pushed past him and made her way to the top of the stairs. The diner quickly came into view before her, vague and draped in too many shadows to make anything out, and she reached a hand out to flick on the light, confidence buoyed by the false sense of security anger often gave people.

And then she froze.

Her stomach dropped.

"Look, I get that you were essentially raised by the Corleones," Jughead growled under his breath as he came up behind her a few seconds later, voice thinned with exasperation, "but there's a very real chance your mobster pride's going to get us both kill—"

His voice suddenly cut out.

She just stared straight ahead, stock-still, eyes fixed on the large expanse of window spanning the length of the diner. Her pulse was thrumming in her ears. Her fingers were stiff fists at her sides. The splotches were thick and glinting, a deep, disturbing red, dribbling down the glass and catching the street lights in sinister winks.

It looked like a scene from a slasher movie.

"Is that—" her uneven voice caught in her throat and she swallowed thickly, trying to steady it. "Is that blood?"

She felt the heat of Jughead's stare shift to the back of her neck. She couldn't look away from the window.

_It's all blood money, anyway._

She'd given up the money.

Maybe this was the blood.

"Stay here," came the eventual response. It was enough to get her to finally break her paralysis and look over her shoulder—he was pulling the hood of his sweater over his head.

She blinked rapidly. "What are you doing?"

"Lock the door behind me."

"Jughead—"

"I'll be quick."

"Yeah, quick to die—whoever did this is still out there!"

He shook his head. "I saw them fleeing from the back after you turned on the light."

"That doesn't mean—"

"Veronica," he cut in, his voice sharpening slightly, revealing the nerves in it, "that could be human blood out there or it could be ketchup—we need to know what we're dealing with before we can figure out what to do about it."

Somewhere deep in the marrow of her head, buried beneath the clamor of fear and anxiety, something loosened at the word 'we'. Whatever this was, it wasn't aimed at him—or at least, it didn't seem to be—but for some reason, with that single pluralization, he was taking it on with her. It drew a tug of gratitude from the pit of her stomach.

"I'll be fine," he concluded as he sidestepped her, rolling up the sleeves of his sweater, and something about the way he said it—brisk, distracted, like he didn't want to give himself enough time to linger on the fact that he didn't actually believe it—made her chest tighten.

"No."

He blew out an exasperated breath as she surged forward and rounded on him, blocking his path. "Veronica—"

"No, this is stupid, this wasn't even aimed at you," she snapped, waving a hand at the window. "If anyone's going out there, it's going to be me."

"And what if it was aimed at me?" Her face crumpled at the nonsensical reply and after a beat, he lapsed into a stressed sigh. "Look, when they were running away, I caught a glimpse of a Ghoulies jacket, alright?"

She blinked, processing the information. "So?"

His brows dove downward. "What do you mean, 'so'—why would the Ghoulies be after you?"

"Why would they come after the diner if they were after  _you_?" she countered, face rumpling in a mirror of his own incomprehension, and he gave a bemused scoff.

"Any number of reasons, Veronica—they know I hang out here, they know you're on friendly terms with the Serpents, Archie and Betty aren't around so you're the last remaining target in our stupid core whatever."

"You mean you actually think they'd use me to get to you because I'm your  _friend_?" She blinked at him. "Jughead, we haven't said a word to each other in weeks—how shitty do you think their intel is?"

"Okay, so maybe that one's a stretch, but that doesn't change the point—"

"What point?"

"That they have way more reason to be coming after me than they do for you," he exclaimed, exasperated.

"How can you possibly know that?" she pressed, feeling herself growing combative. "What if my dad hired them?"

"To hurt the daughter he has a Freudian obsession with?  _Really_?"

"Maybe not hurt, but intimidate—scare me enough to come crawling back."

"Why would he take on the expense of hiring the Ghoulies when he can just run you into the ground financially?"

"Why would the Ghoulies go through the trouble of coming after the diner when they can just go after you directly?"

" _Why are we having a pissing contest about who's higher up on the Ghoulies' hitlist_?"

She just stared at him for a second, mouth parted, eyes bright with a battle-readiness that mirrored his own. And then her brow furrowed. "I don't know." In an unexpected shift in mood, the corners of his mouth twitched up.

They eyed each other for a beat, the agitated tension easing into something a little lighter around them, something neither of them seemed completely familiar with when it came to the other. He looked off-balance. Realer, almost, like less of a stereotype and more of an actual person.

"Look," he eventually offered, averting his gaze, "regardless of who the Ghoulies are or aren't after, I've spent an entire summer learning how to handle them. You've spent an entire summer learning how to handle the diner. Just in case they're still around and looking for trouble, I think I should be the one to check on things outside and you should be the one to hold down the fort. Fair?"

His gaze flicked back up to hers, partially obscured by the stupid lock of hair always slicing across his forehead, and she chewed her lip. "Why does that feel like letting you win?"

"Because you're competitive to the point of lunacy and need help."

She lapsed into a scoff. "Like you're one to talk."

"Veronica."

She avoided his stare for a few seconds, not quite able to admit to herself that she was stalling. The longer she spent bickering with Jughead, the longer she got to exist without knowing if there was blood and a 'you're next' smeared across her window.

"I'm going to go outside now."

She cleared her throat. "Fine."

"So I'm going to need you to move out of the way."

She took a stiff step to the side and gestured past herself, ushering him out.

He eyed her for a beat before easing past her and heading to the door, footsteps diminishing behind her and then dropping off entirely. It wasn't until she heard the click of the last deadbolt that she finally turned around. "Jughead?"

He glanced over at her, fingers curled around the lock.

"Thank you." His brow furrowed. "For, you know, coming over to help me in the middle of the night. For coming over at all, really. You didn't have to and I appreciate it." She swallowed a little awkwardly. "Just wanted to tell you that in case you get murdered."

His mouth tugged into a slant.

"Well, that and that your beanie's hideous."

"You've told me that a few times, actually."

"Yeah, but you needed to hear it again at least once before you die."

"Right."

"But also don't die."

His brows ticked up, seemingly as surprised by the sentiment as she was. "I thought the world could absolutely survive having one less Jughead in it."

She feigned innocence. "Is that what I said?"

"Only word for word."

"I was high on diner fumes."

His eyes took on a subtle glint at the familiar words. "And standing in the exact same diner for five more minutes cured you of that?"

Her mouth flickered. "Medical miracle."

And with that brief exchange, Jughead undid the final lock and slipped out into the night.

 

* * *

 

The good news was it wasn't blood.

It wasn't ketchup, either.

It was paint—or more specifically, paint from a paintball gun that someone'd accidentally left behind in the Pop's parking lot, likely from the haste of a quick escape.

The bad news was that they hadn't actually been aiming at the diner window. They'd been aiming at a target they'd taped onto the diner window. A target with Veronica's face on it.

And the use of exclusively red paint seemed very much intentional.

"Maybe you were onto something with your dad's intimidation tactic theory," Jughead mused as he plucked a fry off the plate in front of him and popped it into his mouth. Nearly an hour had gone by since they'd discovered the window, and after helping Veronica clean the paint off, secure all the locks, and draw all the blinds, she'd insisted on paying him back in the only currency he really dealt in: food.

"Maybe," she said with a shrug from across his favorite booth, swirling her straw around what little was left of her chocolate milkshake. He remembered the first time she'd served him one that summer, how watery and thin it had been. He'd been so convinced she was going to run Pop's into the ground.

He was starting to realize he had a habit of being wrong about her.

That, or she just had a habit of proving him wrong.

 

"He also might've done something to piss the Ghoulies off and now they're taking it out on you," he offered, and her lips lifted humorlessly.

"Wouldn't be the first time."

She seemed drawn, gaze fixed on some nonspecific spot behind him, and even though he knew the words weren't aimed at him, he still felt a tug of guilt in his stomach. He'd definitely taken part in that blame game a few times. More than a few times. Betty, too. Everyone he knew, really, come to think of it.

Everyone except for Archie.

His gaze flickered a little bit, something finally clicking in his head.

There had always been a small, admittedly shitty part of him that'd never understood how Archie and Veronica had lasted as long as they had. Like on paper, sure, they made sense—the cheerleader and the quarterback, dazzling and popular, oozing sex appeal, both looking like they'd been plucked out of a magazine featuring the world's most beautiful teenagers—but in real life?

In real life, they didn't quite seem to line up.

Archie was straightforward. A set of parallel lines that never snagged on each other. He dove into things with his whole heart and only ever stopped to think about the 'why' of it all after the fact, if at all. Veronica was all intersections and angles. Ten steps ahead of everything she came into contact with, a perpetually branching logic tree of consequences and calculated risks. Everywhere Archie was a straight line, she was a knot.

In his experience, only tangled people knew how to untie knots.

And yet, looking at her now, her dark eyes faraway and vague, he noticed that she wasn't just ten steps ahead of everyone. She was ten steps away from them, too. Isolated by her circumstances, by the consequences of her parents' actions. The only person those circumstances had never managed to push away was Archie.

And now he was in jail because of it.

It suddenly struck him how alone she was. Alone enough to work twelve hour shifts at a diner every day. Alone enough to have to call him of all people for help. With Betty growing brighter and more out of reach with every passing day, throwing into sharp relief the fact that his own life was just growing darker and more fucked up, the feeling was razingly familiar.

Her unfocused stare suddenly flicked to his and he straightened like he'd been stabbed with a hot poker. "Done?"

He blinked at her in incomprehension and she nodded at his abandoned plate. It still had a few fries on it. "Oh, uh, yeah," he said, reaching a hand back to rub the back of his neck. "Thanks."

He expected some kind of snarky response, a 'call the Riverdale Register, Jughead Jones just left food on a plate', but all she offered was a prim nod as she swiped it up. He watched her stack the dishes and get to her feet with a scrutinizing look, and right as she turned toward the kitchen, she caught it. "What?"

He cleared his expression. "Nothing."

She blinked at him.

"It's nothing."

"Spit it out, Jones."

"I don't know what you're talking about."

Her gaze remained fixed on his for a few more seconds before veering into a roll, and he watched her turn on her heel and make her way to the counter. His eyes dimmed again. Even her walk was off. There was no superior swing to her hips, no deliberate shift of her weight to the points of her feet.

His face crumpled suddenly—since when the hell did he know Veronica's  _walk_?

"Listen, thanks for coming by and helping with everything, Jughead," she called from across the counter, and he couldn't help but notice the sudden perfunctory shift in her tone. "I can take it from here. You should go home, get some sleep."

It was phrased like a suggestion but delivered like a command. He shrugged it off. "I can stay till you leave."

She shook her head as she scrubbed down the dishes. "No need, I'm going to be here for a few more hours to handle some paperwork I'm behind on so it'll be morning by the time I leave."

His eyes thinned at the words. He glanced at the clock above her. "It's two-thirty."

"Yeah."

"The sun doesn't come up till six-thirty—you're going to do paperwork for four hours?"

_"Yeah."_

"Why?"

She heaved a sharp sigh. "Because I'm a full-time student and a business owner, Jughead. I do things whenever I find the time. Right now, I happen to have time."

"And sleeping is just a luxury you indulge in every now and again, or…?"

She set the sponge down with a stiff, humorless smile. "Basically, yeah."

He raised his eyebrows at her. She was trying to get rid of him. Why, though? There was no way she wasn't still rattled—tonight had easily been the most scared he'd ever seen her. He almost said as much but then he took a second to note how tired she looked. Pissy, defensive, and irritated, sure, but underneath all of that, an unmistakable basecoat of tired.

He swallowed his words.

Whatever was going on with her, he probably didn't need to make it any worse.

His face must've betrayed his observation, though, because for what seemed like the millionth time that night, hers took on a bright flash of exasperation. "For fuck's sake, Jughead,  _what_?"

"What?"

"You keep staring at me like you want to say something but you're afraid you're going to break the friggin' time-space continuum if you do."

He sighed and pushed himself out of the booth. "Look, it's not… I just—"

She stared at him like she was approximately two seconds away from decapitating him and he tossed his hands up in resignation—fuck it.

"I mean, you're obviously not okay, Veronica." Her brows flew up at the assertion and he continued before she could scalp him. "And I get that for some reason you want me to believe you are, and I'm trying to pretend I do, I really am, but I just don't understand _why_ —I mean, you called me over here because you were scared," he pointed out, waving a hand behind him. "And given what happened, you have every right to be. I saw what they did to that window—hell, I helped you clean it up—but now you're pushing me out the door like you're this unflappable badass who's totally cool spending the night alone in here and you know what," he scoffed, eyes thinning, and distantly, he felt himself getting a little carried away, "it's not even just tonight. It's this whole summer. This whole shitty fucking summer that I know you've had, and you know I've had, and we both know we've both had, so why the tough act now? Why do we do that? Why do we pretend we're okay when we're not? What's the point? What's there to gain? Who wins?"

His voice rang in the otherwise quiet air for a few seconds, sharp-edged and bitter, and it took him a beat to realize he wasn't even looking at her anymore. His focus was inverted, frustration boomeranging inward, manifested in the unconscious curl of his fists.

He swallowed. Loosened his hands. Glanced down at the ground.

"What I'm trying to say," he began again after a long beat, voice a little cooler, "is that I know you're not okay. So if there's something I can do to make you feel better, even if you've convinced yourself it's stupid, you should drop the bullshit and let me know."

For an extended beat, she didn't say anything.

He had no idea what she was thinking.

He had no idea what  _he_  was thinking—honestly, what the hell was he even doing here?

And then, just as he was about to cut his losses and leave, she cleared her throat.

"I live here."

His stare shot up to hers.

She was staring down at the plates in her hand, not quite able to meet his eye.

"I've, uh..." she tucked a loose lock of hair behind her ear, hand a little unsteady, "I've been living in the cellar since I bought the place. I just," she shook her head, "I couldn't stand living under my dad's roof after everything he did, so the day I got the keys, I packed up whatever I could and brought it here. That's why I was trying to get you to leave." She swallowed unevenly. "I didn't want anyone to know."

It took him a second to process the information. Distantly, it made sense. She was always in the diner. He never really saw her leave, even when he used to stay till the middle of the night. She wasn't always wearing her uniform when she was there—even tonight, she'd answered the door in leggings and a thick sweater. But even with all the signs, signs he of all people should've been able to recognize given his frequent dalliances with homelessness, it was hard to reconcile Veronica Lodge, champion of all things extravagant and lush, living alone in a dusty little cellar beneath a diner.

"I get it," he offered after a long beat, shoulders easing into a shrug. "Trust me. I get it."

She nodded at the floor. "I figured."

He eyed her closely. "Then why not just tell me?"

She gave a soft scoff. "I don't know, Jughead, I mean, are we really those kinds of friends?"

He was surprised to find that she'd been pondering the same question.

She didn't seem to know the answer, either.

Her stare eventually flicked up to meet his, and he offered an uncertain shrug. "I mean... we can be."

She seemed to consider the words for a few seconds.

He didn't know why he felt a little apprehensive.

"I don't know."

Something tightened a little bit in his stomach, an instinctive reaction to rejection.

"What if your horrific style starts rubbing off on me?"

The uneasiness faded.

"What if I start wearing beanies?"

"You couldn't pull off a beanie."

"I can pull off anything."

"You want to bet?" he replied, reaching up for his own to toss at her, and her face contorted in horror.

"I'm homeless, Jones, not standardless."

He dropped his hand back down with a smug look, distantly relieved that she'd rejected the idea. He didn't know why, but upon a further consideration, the idea of her wearing his beanie unsettled him a bit.

"So," she ventured after a long beat, reaching down to fiddle with a loose thread from her apron, "now that we're 'friends' or whatever, I guess I, you know," she cleared her throat, averting her gaze a bit, and he couldn't help but enjoy seeing her look so awkward—usually that was his territory, "wouldn't hate it if you stayed till I finished washing up."

He furrowed his brow, pretending to consider the request. "I mean, it's a big ask."

She rolled her eyes.

"Especially for our first day—like, we've really only been at this for a few seconds."

"Just shut up and watch me wash things, Jughead."

And so he did.

And when she finished cleaning up and decided to read a little bit before bed, he stayed for that, too.

And when she went downstairs to wash up and change into her pajamas, he stayed for that, too.

And when she told him she was going to 'rest her eyes for just a few seconds' and ended up falling completely asleep, he stayed for that, too.

In fact, it wasn't until he awoke to a slant of morning sunlight shining straight into his eyes that he figured it was probably time to go home. He slid up the worn vinyl of the booth with a wince, dragging a ragged hand over his face. His back was all knotted up. His beanie was halfway off his head.

There was a chance he should've taken her up on her pillow offer.

With a little pain and a little more effort, he dragged himself up to his feet and gathered his things. He debated making a pot of coffee but decided against it—he was meeting up with the Serpents in a little bit and Toni always brought a thermos for him.

He slipped down the stairs as quietly as he could, heading for the backdoor since the front door wouldn't automatically lock behind him, and just as he passed the cellar, he caught sight of Veronica curled up in an armchair, book abandoned in her lap, fast asleep. She hadn't even made it to her blow-up mattress.

She hadn't even managed to grab a blanket.

"Christ, Veronica," he muttered as he stepped into the room, grabbing a wool throw off her desk chair and quietly approaching her pretzeled frame. It was October in Riverdale—it couldn't be more than fifty degrees in that room. He draped the blanket carefully around her, taking care to cover as much of her as he could, and she immediately snuggled into it, pulling it tighter around her frame and burrowing her head into the chair.

The reaction drew an instinctive half-smile out of him.

She looked like a little kid.

Like someone who didn't deserve all the shitty things that'd happened to her.

It sobered his expression a little.

None of them did, really.

"Night, Lodge," he murmured after a second, giving one of her curls a brief, parting flick. 

She stirred a bit but ultimately slipped back into sleep—or at least that was what he thought, until he turned to leave and felt a hand wrap around his wrist.

"No."

It was a slurred word, barely intelligible, but the tug on his hand made the intention clear. He turned back around with a surprised look that quickly warmed into amusement—her features were pulled into a deep, childish furrow.

"Veronica."

"Mm."

"It's morning."

"Mm," she echoed again, this time disapproving.

"Coast is clear."

She didn't respond to that one, seemingly drifting back into sleep, but her hand was tight around his wrist. He sighed and dropped down to a crouch in front of her, lowering his voice to a murmur.

"Veronica."

"Mm."

"I've got to go."

"Mm."

"As in you've got to let go of my hand."

She did nothing, face still caught in that petulant, sleepy frown, and he couldn't help but lapse into a chuckle at how completely unintimidating she looked when she was asleep.

"I'm going to pull my hand free now."

He tugged his hand back just hard enough to slip it through her fingers and she immediately dug them into the blanket instead, pulling it tighter against her chest. For some reason, possibly just the sheer rareness of the moment, he took a second to look at her. At the long fan of eyelashes casting shadows against her cheeks in the dim morning light. At the messy waves her hair had taken on after having been in a ponytail all day. At the quiet purse of her normally  _very_ loud mouth.

It was, like most things about her, strangely hard to look away from.

"Have a great day, Archiekins," she suddenly mumbled out, snapping him right out of his unintentional observation, and the last thing he remembered feeling was a sharp flare of surprise before she leaned forward and caught his mouth in a swift kiss.

It was a shock of electricity. A brief brush of lips, more friction than anything, and yet somehow, despite the fact that it wasn't even intended for him, it managed to feel ruinously, razingly intimate. He didn't know why. It was over in a blink—one second her mouth was on his and the next it was settled against her hands, blissfully unaware of all the universal laws it had just broken. All he could do was just crouch there, frozen, not even in the zipcode of knowing what to do.

He left not knowing what to do.

He went through his Serpents meeting not knowing what to do.

He met up with Betty for dinner not knowing what to do.

He ended his day not knowing what to do.

And when he saw her in the hallway on Monday, she smiled her usual 'hello you're an idiot' smile and not a 'sorry for kissing you' smile and he just stood there, a lanky human question mark, not knowing what to do.

Veronica Lodge had accidentally kissed him and didn't even remember and he had no fucking idea what to do with that.

 

* * *

 

 **A/N:** _Ayyyyooooo,_ I feel like this is a little of all over the place and I'm going to have to edit the shit out of it when I'm not so cross-eyed tired, but I really wanted to get some writing in over Christmas, so here we are! Again, I have no idea what's happening in Riverdale and there's a 10/10 chance I went way out of character with everyone, but you know what, whatever, ya girl tried. Anyway, just wanted to drop in to thank you all for the feedback on the last chapter - it was lovely and thoughtful and definitely what made me come back to write more, so thank you so, so much (and special shout out to izzybusiness who left the raddest review ever and also happens to be one of my absolute favorite jeronica writers - I've been reading her stuff since she started; hiiiighly recommend you all check out it out if you haven't). Also, I'm leaning toward making this into more of a short story with a linear narrative rather than a collection of isolated one-shots, but I'm open to suggestions, so please drop a line and let me know what you think! As always, thanks for reading my hot garbage and happiest of holidays, friends :) 


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